Browse NCJ Daily

Browse Classifieds

Locally Censored

Editor:

Woefully Underreported story #7 is actually a local one: we live in the cradle of the U.S. Navy whose training grounds begin just 12 miles away ("Project Censored," Oct. 5). Ever-more-powerful and sophisticated weapons are born in our own neighborhood.

The comment period on their most recent supplemental Environmental Impact Statement just closed on Friday. The Navy recommended that we express detailed and specific concerns ("the effect of sonar at 235 decibels on pinnipeds must be evaluated") instead of general statements ("You're turning the ocean into a desert!") to which they are deaf. They did not come down for hearings this time, rightly anticipating massive hostility to their plans.

People are furious about the marine mammals, as story #7 discussed, but this masks alarm over the Navy's global mischief-making. Its stated mission is to "win wars and deter aggression" but instead it starts wars and incites aggression.

And it is turning the ocean into desert. The U.S. Armed Forces are the largest single polluter on the planet. Phytoplankton, the base of the ocean's entire food chain and producing the oxygen for two out of every three breaths we take, has diminished by 40 percent since 1950.

We need to hop in our rowboats, as it were, and paddle out to stop them. And we need a Congress who will chain themselves to their desks in protest, instead of approving these cancerous military budgets.